Gun laws won't help -- society must address mental health issues

By Dennis Smith

Posted:
12/19/2012 03:08:28 PM MST

Expecting me to write an upbeat, joyful, "Christmasy" outdoor column in the aftermath of another horrifying school massacre is about as realistic as asking me to swim up Niagara Falls with a truck engine strapped to my back. I can't do it.

But my deadline looms, and waiting for the sickening confusion of anger, pain, fear, and gut-wrenching despair to pass isn't going to happen either. I'm consumed by the depth of loss and grief those families must feel -- and it's not going to go away. Not today, not tomorrow, not ever. Not for me, not for you, and certainly not for the students, teachers, and families of Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. Something has gone horribly, tragically wrong in America. Suddenly, "No Country for Old Men" isn't just the title of a movie anymore. It is America in the year 2012.

That anyone could even conceive of, much less inflict, such unspeakable cruelty and violent death on innocent little schoolchildren and their teachers defies all human comprehension. But it's happening with alarming regularity. Why?

Our first reaction in the wake of these atrocities is to look for something or someone beyond the shooter to blame: guns, violent movies and video games, social media, declining socioeconomic climate, generational moral decay ... whatever.

As expected, the politicians and disarmament lobby are already circling the corpses of those innocent kids and teachers like vultures, drooling over the feeding frenzy of gun control legislation they can't wait to launch. Missing the larger and far more meaningful point -- that this not a gun problem; it's a growing mental illness problem -- they'll ban this firearm or that magazine, knowing full well such laws cannot protect our children from these psychopaths. Our kids deserve better.

Behavioral scientists at Harvard's Shorenstein Center, studying what they define as the emerging phenomenon of "Rampage Violence," can explain some of the psychology of the mass killings, but are far from understanding how to betteridentify potential mass killers in advance. Their stereotypical mass murderer kills in public during the daytime, plans his offense well in advance, comes prepared with a powerful arsenal of weapons, has no escape planned, and expects to be killed during the incident. Further research suggests he is driven by strong feelings of anger, resentment and persecution complex disorders. He views himself as carrying out a highly personal agenda of payback. A revenge fantasy becomes the last refuge for his mortally wounded self-esteem, and ultimately enables him to commit mass murder-suicide." (Journal of American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law, March 2010).

A 2004 article in Behavioral Sciences and the Law states, "Not only do these massacres follow an almost stereotypical course, but the perpetrators share common social and psychological disabilities. They are isolates, with personalities marked by suspiciousness, obsessional traits and grandiosity. They harbor persecutory beliefs verging on the delusional. The autogenic massacre is essentially murder suicide, in which the perpetrators intend first to kill as many people as they can and then kill themselves."

Personally, I have little faith our legislators can figure this out by themselves -- they can't even balance a checkbook, right? We cannot allow them to fire off another round of useless gun laws. Instead, we need to make certain they focus on the growing mental health problem. Our children's lives depend on it.

Dennis Smith is a Loveland outdoors writer and photographer, and his freelance work is published nationally. Smith's Home Waters column appears on the first and third Thursdays of the month. He can be reached at Dsmith7136@msn.com.